“I’m not surprised when the New Atheists are characterized in ways which attempt to erase what they are saying or just get them to shut up. They’re forcing a conversation that most on the left really don’t want to have.”

Unrelated – we should legit refer to the shows as “Star Trek: Orville” and “The Discovery” in the interest of greater accuracy. The Discovery is insultingly bad writing, forehead-smashingly-stupid science (yes, far moreso than normal Trek), and so visually ugly that it’s sandpaper for the eyes. ORV, on the other hand, is everything Trek was at its peak, with extra silliness thrown in. And yeah, a lame post-divorce thing you gotta overlook, but every Trek had something you had to bear through. It’s the true successor of the Trek line, I am seriously surprised by how good it is.

For me the Orville totally works. I don’t really mind the fact that they bring up the divorce every episode because it’s not that big a deal, I know by now that they’ll move on from there after a minute, when it gets brought up.

And the not entirely serious setting is something somewhat common in a lot of SciFi series. To me it feels like they know very well which part is comedy and which part is serious plot and keep them separated, same as other series like Doctor Who for example do.